INDIANAPOLIS — The board of directors of the Society of Professional Journalists has voted to retire a lifetime achievement award named for longtime journalist Helen Thomas, who has made a series of controversial statements about Jews over the past year.
The board of the national journalism group made the decision on Friday.
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The 90-year-old Thomas grew up in Detroit and retired as a columnist for Hearst Newspapers last year after telling an interviewer that Israelis should get out of the Palestinian territories and go to Germany, Poland or the US.
She told a crowd in Dearborn, Michigan in December that "Zionists" control Congress, Wall Street and Hollywood.
